Ask yourself, why is this person posting these items, what benefit is there to this crazy undercut? Does this person just want fast gold and therefore I can flip the item? Is this person emptying their guild bank?

Why, what, when, where, etc. Don't just bid/buy/post blindly before you understand why your opponenets are doing what they're doing. Get into their heads and you'll be surprised at the kind of mind games you can play with people.

For the comments, does anyone have an example of when they 'played' a fellow auctioneer?

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comments: on "21 Tips in 21 Days to Auctioneering: Tip #14"

The best play I have is typically on market monopolizers. They've bought out the whole market hoping to double the sale price and I slowly post one or two at slightly above reasonable prices which they then buy in an attempt to continue to control the supply. I keep unloading my inventory slowly at very favorable prices until they break.

This also works in categories that are temporarily flooded, and new stock is being added below already-undercut prices. In this case, I'll keep adding more stock at the bottom of the list to keep prices falling and to set even lower price points for the next poster.

Once everyone's run out of stock, I can go back and start buying items to relist, canceling my auctions as I go.

i saw a guy throw tons of herbs up on the AH all at the same price, as they were all frost wyrm flask mats i bought em up, i thought he prolly just didnt want to be bothered waiting around for the market to get better as this was on a sunday, i PMed him and asked if he had any frost lotus he wanted to get rid of. i ended up picking up 20 for only 20g each, hes now on my friend list and i buy cheap herbs regularly, good times

I love price setters like you that think they know a reasonable price. Smart monopolizers don't buy out markets that are not commonly flooded. You only ran into a rookie that tries to control markets like ore or some other high demand market. This a blog about making gold, not about how little punks skimp the markets.

The way to control markets like that is to post the items so low that it sucks the blood out of you. Then after you leave repost at 150%, come back, do it again, until you quit.

Sounds to me like someone is a little too bitter about not actually having monopoly pricing power because they do not, in fact, control the supply.

Seriously, I have about 500 large prismatic shards... if I can sell them for 15g instead of 9 while some "rookie" tries to move the market to 20, that's a way to make 3000 more gold. And right, selling your mats for less than they're worth to crowd out your comp is a great contribution to a blog about making gold.

Market cornering may work in profession powerlevel (ie steady low supply, sporadic high demand) choke points - the price in those markets should be close to the price it would cost for an 80 to farm it themselves. All you're doing is taking advantage of "rookies" who don't know how to shop for their mats in advance (ie when you buy them) and lower levels who don't know the true value of their items.

But frankly I make 1-2k G per day without the micro-management or risk of getting blown out of the water the next time more than 1 person decides to level in Eastern Plaguelands.

people usualy try to trick me with 10g undercuts on my meta gems, i dont undercut them, i just buy the gems once there offline(also offline with their alts, that obviously, i have them in my friendlist) them i put my gems at a very lucrative price again. but DONT do this when they flood the AH with 10 + gems.

I watch a few different markets that tend to flood occasionally. I pick up 10-80 stacks of the item in question, save it for 1-2 weeks, and then turn around and sell it for 30-200% profit. This is somewhat high risk, though, in markets that could change with new patches, etc., so I stick to older and more stable ones in general.

Playing others is much fun. On our server flasks went up from 29g to 40g each in the last 3 weeks. We have a "pseudo monopolist" which does quite a lot of undercutting with quickauctions2, buys out themarket, and relists at higher prices.

Seeing him undercutting every minute, I posted a stack of 2 flasks at 29g in each category, seeing him undercutting them with single posts while the rest of the market was still at 38g. I bought all of them, and he kept posting. I think I bought 400 flasks at 29g, relisting them at 37g whenhis stock went out.